whatsapp-chat-parser

WhatsApp Chat Parser

A package to parse WhatsApp chats with Node.js or in the browser 💬

Important notice

🚨 v4.0.0 brings some BREAKING CHANGES, check out the release page for more info.

Introduction

This library allows you to parse WhatsApp chat logs from text format into javascript objects, enabling you to more easily manipulate the data, create statistics, export it in different formats, etc.

You can test the package online with this example website:
whatsapp-chat-parser.netlify.app (Source code)

Install

$ npm install whatsapp-chat-parser

Usage

Node

import fs from 'node:fs';
import * as whatsapp from 'whatsapp-chat-parser';

const text = fs.readFileSync('path/to/_chat.txt', 'utf8');
const messages = whatsapp.parseString(text);

console.log(messages);

Browser

Add the script to your HTML file (usually just before the closing </body> tag).
Then use it in your JavaScript code, the whatsappChatParser variable will be globally available.

<script src="path/to/index.global.js"></script>
<script>
  const messages = whatsappChatParser.parseString(
    '06/03/2017, 00:45 - Sample User: This is a test message',
  );

  console.log(messages);
</script>

Or with type="module" loading the ESM version:

<script type="module">
  import * as whatsapp from 'path/to/index.js';

  const messages = whatsapp.parseString(
    '06/03/2017, 00:45 - Sample User: This is a test message',
  );

  console.log(messages);
</script>

You can also use the jsDelivr CDN.

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/whatsapp-chat-parser/dist/index.global.js"></script>
<!-- Or use a specific version -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/whatsapp-chat-parser@4.0.2/dist/index.global.js"></script>

Message structure

The messages variable is an array of objects like this:

[
  {
    date: '2018-06-02T22:45:00.000Z', // Date object
    author: 'Luke',
    message: 'Hey how are you?',
  },
  {
    date: '2018-06-02T23:48:00.000Z', // Date object
    author: 'Joe',
    message: 'All good, thanks',
  },
];

When using the option parseAttachments, the message may contain an additional property attachment:

[
  {
    date: '2018-06-02T23:50:00.000Z', // Date object
    author: 'Joe',
    message: '<attached: 00000042-PHOTO-2020-06-07-15-13-20.jpg>',
    attachment: {
      fileName: '00000042-PHOTO-2020-06-07-15-13-20.jpg',
    },
  },
];

In the case of a system message, the author will be null

[
  {
    date: '2018-06-02T22:45:00.000Z', // Date object
    author: null,
    message: 'You created group "Party 🎉"',
  },
];

API

parseString(string, [options]) → Array

string

Type: string

Raw string of the WhatsApp conversation

options

Type: object

A configuration object, more details below

Options

Name	Type	Default	Description
daysFirst	Boolean	undefined	Specify if the dates in your log file start with a day (true) or a month (false). Manually specifying this may improve performance. By default the program will try to infer this information using 3 different methods (look at date.ts for the implementation), if all fails it defaults to days first.
parseAttachments	Boolean	false	Specify if attachments should be parsed. If set to true, messages with attachments will include an attachment property with information about the attachment.

A note about messages order

Sometimes, likely due to connection issues, WhatsApp exports contain messages that are not chronologically ordered.
This library won't change the order of the messages, but if your application expects a certain order make sure to sort the array of messages accordingly before use.

See #247 for more info.

How to export WhatsApp chats

• Android
• iPhone

Technologies used

• Language: TypeScript
• Testing: Vitest
• Code formatting: Prettier
• Linting: ESLint (with Airbnb rules)

Requirements

Node

Node.js >= 8.0.0

Browser

This package is written in TypeScript with target compilation to ES6.
It should work in all relevant browsers from ~2017 onwards.

Changelog

CHANGELOG

License

MIT